


STARCRAFTER

by Caellie_E_and_Vaye_Rue_Y



Series: Spontaneous Fics [3]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: AU, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Gen, Imagination, Logicality if you squint - Freeform, No Plot/Plotless, Not sure what the AU is but it's an AU I know that much, Reflection, fluff I suppose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:09:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23585155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caellie_E_and_Vaye_Rue_Y/pseuds/Caellie_E_and_Vaye_Rue_Y
Summary: This star lacks hope.Logan pours it out onto his worktable, stardust trickling off the wood and pooling on the floor, and begins again.Starcrafting is a long and technical process.And he's loathe to mess it up.Patton has never lost his imagination.Some would call that a fault.He calls it fantastic.Because each blade of grass, each individual bee, each speck in the sky that glimmers so brightly, is so... beautiful. Oh, he could drink in this beauty all day long.(In which Logan crafts stars and Patton stumbles into his shop)
Relationships: Logic | Logan Sanders & Morality | Patton Sanders
Series: Spontaneous Fics [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1640416
Kudos: 9





	STARCRAFTER

Ever since he was young, Logan had looked up to the stars. Stared at them in curiosity and wonder, for countless hours on end, when he was supposed to be fast asleep. What held them in place there, transfixed in the sky? What made them sparkle, and shine, and twinkle up there, amongst black and empty void?

_ Magic _ , when he was young. 

_ Science _ , when he grew older.

_ A very long and technical process _ , now. Now that he knows better. Now that he knows the feeling of holding a half-made star in his hands, thoughtfully shaping each one and hanging it, suspended, in the sky, for the next person to see and wonder and stare at when they're supposed to be asleep. Stare the same way he did, when the sun had left to rest in preparation for the next day and the rest of the world followed suit.

It's a dying business. Just like his mentor, before Logan inherited his shop. Just like his parents, before they sent him away. Logan defends it fiercely, though. It's a dying business, sure. But he'd defend it until his own dying breath.

For now, though, he focuses on crafting each star. Day by day. One star at a time.

He has a few ongoing projects, of course. But he takes care to make each star different. The one that shimmers like snow on a sunny day. The one that has nebulas swirling in its depths. The one that sparkles like a lake in summer.

Logan spent too long on this star.

It's cold in his hands, cold and blue, cold and blue and dying. It glittered, before, deeply purple and the darkest maroon hidden in its folds. This was intended to be a special star, tucked away between galaxies, a special present for those who wanted to look and stare at when they’re supposed to be asleep. Logan has fixed others like these in the skies, but this one was going to be different. 

He's spent too long on it, though. Now it’s dying.

He slips through the back of the store to the garden and carefully unfurls the star into the soil, sprinkling it into the dirt like he would water. He grows strange plants here with his stars. Plants that curl up to the sky in gentle waves. Plants that reach down to hug the earth desperately, sobbing green tears. Plants that shine like the stars he waters them with, although he doesn’t know exactly what they are.

He sets the empty star aside next to a small line of others to be refilled by moonlight come nightfall. And he puts his hands on his hips, his fingertips stained by stardust, and he sighs. 

Yes, starcrafting is a dying business. But it's  _ his _ business, and he would defend it. With his dying breath. 

Logan makes his way back into his shop. He still has to finish the set of stars for that night, and improve the sparkle in the star he called the Infinity Star, since the way the white in it circles makes it look like it went on forever.

He slides the star on his desk into his hand, feeling the heat spread to his bones. He shifts it in his grip and, one of his tools clutched between his teeth, reaches for a drink of water.

The city is cutting off his supply of money, a little at a time, as its new rulers grew impatient with the starcrafting business. They had wanted to give him extra, in return for knowledge of how to harness the power of the stars, but Logan refused. He still refuses, when they come up to his door with petitions and scrolls and fancy robes. The stars were never intended to be harnessed. They were intended to be  _ seen _ . Looked up to. Strived towards. Stared at when the sun has set and the earth is quiet. A reminder of hope for humanity, that wonder still exists in this world.

The process of starcrafting is a government funded trade, now. Logan remembers when his mentor would sit them both in front of the fire, stars in their hands and eyes, and tell him about the old days, when people would buy wonder, and hope, and mystery, bottled and sold by the pint. When people would flood starcrafting shops for a taste of the unusual, when starcrafters would not only create stars but entire galaxies out of the palms of their hands. When starcrafting flourished.

Now, though, Logan sits in his empty, dark shop, and he carves glistening explosions in the star's depths, and he works away any doubt or fear.

He stares at the star as he crafts it and tries to conjure the hope, the wonder, the awe he remembers. 

All he sees is an empty mass of energy. Scientific matter. A ball of explanations and order. He looks out the window, and he sees an empty people, made of knowledge, and facts. No imagination. No wonder. 

Logan wants to learn. He wants to learn about the world around him, every flower and every bird and every inch of the amazingness that surrounds him. But the power of learning is diminished by lack of wonder. Lack of motivation. Lack of  _ hope _ . 

This star lacks hope.

He pours it out onto his worktable, stardust trickling off the wood and pooling on the floor, and begins again.

Starcrafting is a long and technical process. 

And he's loathe to mess it up.

Mess up the balance, the principle of starcrafting.  _ Balance _ . Wonder and knowledge. Awe and skepticism. Imagination and facts. Chaos. Order.

But it's hard to create wonder when the wonder has leaked out of him, lost in the dreary life he now inhabits. Gone is the extraordinary awe he feels. The drive to learn, absorb, stare at the sky when he's supposed to be asleep. He's too tired, now, keeping the universe running, the stars shining, the galaxy alive, to stay awake at night.

He runs stardust through his fingers and wishes for curiosity.

The bell at the front door rings.

"Hello?" A voice calls.

Logan straightens.

There's somebody in his shop.

~~~~

Patton has never lost his imagination. 

Some would call that a fault.

He calls it fantastic.

And time consuming, sometimes. And distracting. When he has to stop, and  _ look _ . Just for a moment. And admire the world he lives in. 

Because each blade of grass, each individual bee, each speck in the sky that glimmers so brightly, is so...  _ beautiful _ . He could lay in a field and drink it in, drink in the sheer  _ beauty _ of the world around him.

Oh, he could drink in this beauty all day long.

He can't, though, because he has a life he has to live. And plans to make, and things to do, and he has to do them  _ now _ , no time to appreciate the way his fingers move, and his lungs breathe, and his mind works, because the world had reasons for that now, and the world had moved on. 

Patton would never get used to the world he lives in.

The world itself got used to it the minute machines came out. And it realized that it never has to wait, sit,  _ appreciate _ anymore. And he likes machines. He likes order, and organization, and laws and rules. But the world has moved from chaotic to ordered. And he's realized too much of either is bad.

Patton is meandering.

He's meandering his way down Main Street, dodging cars and pedestrians, and simultaneously wondering what the fingers that crafted the clouds look like. Long, nimble, the fingers of a pianist? Quick, calloused, attached to the palms of a seamstress? Somehow he can't imagine them being thick and calloused and used to holding swords instead of the paintbrushes of nature. 

But there is order and chaos in all things, and he wonders if the maker of the clouds is a warrior, who slices their sword through mists and fogs and breathes them into the sky to hang over his head. 

He takes a moment to breathe. And breathe again, and revel in the fact that  _ he's breathing _ . He knows why, and he knows how. But that doesn't stop him from reveling.

Somebody bumps him from behind, and the fascinated smile on his face falls into a frustrated frown. "Some of us don't have all day."

Neither does Patton. "Sorry!"

The person just grunts and stomps on, and Patton wilts.

Sometimes it seems like the world is deflating. All of the air in it sinking out until nothing remains but a flat corpse of a globe. 

Patton straightens himself, imagines a string attached to his head, that his body is a puppet he operates on a stick, and he must prance for the audience, prance and convince them that he doesn't wish the world ended because then maybe people would think about the day they're in and the day the were in instead of the day they will be in. He straightens himself, and he walks. Hands tucked in pockets, shoulders slouched, face shaped into a busy "I have things to do and plans to make" expression. And he tries to stifle the urge to slow down and look at all of the signs because he's never been in this part of the city before and  _ meander _ . He has no time for meandering. He has to get home from work before the sun's day ends before he does. 

But a sign catches his eye. And he stops. And he looks. And he  _ meanders _ .

_ STARCRAFTER _ , the sign reads. One word, and Patton isn't even fully aware what that word means. Starcrafter. A crafter of stars.

Patton didn't know anybody crafted stars. He thought they were made of scientific matter. Balls of explanations and order. Like everything around him.

He looks around. Nobody seems to have noticed the strange sign, hanging over the strange shop, surrounded by not-strange buildings. Or maybe they just don't care.

Patton hoists his bag over his shoulder. And he knocks on the door. And he enters.

A bell dings. Softly. Sharply. Once. Piercing the quiet  _ tock-tick _ of a clock on the wall.

Time seems to slow.

Patton would marvel at the inside of the shop. Stars glistening, unfinished, on the desk. Jars of shimmer and glimmer and gold are lined up orderly on shelves in the back. Sprawling, messy maps and charts and formulas are all neatly tacked up on the wall. Order. And chaos. Ordered chaos.

Just how Patton likes it.

He would marvel at all this.

He does marvel, for a moment, as his mouth moves, calls "hello?" and his eyes widen.

But then his eyes alight on a figure, perched on a stool near the back of the store, face lit by a glowing mass of starlight, and Patton is distracted from the shop because this boy is more marvelous than anything Patton had seen before. The boy looks up, and his eyes are filled with stars, and his hands are stained with stardust, and he says, slowly, cautiously,  _ hopefully _ , "can I help you?"

And Patton says, " _ yes _ ." Because it's true, and he doesn't know what else to say. "Are you the Starcrafter?"

The boy sets the gleaming mass on the desk. "I am."

Patton tries to form his next question, but all he wants to say is  _ wow. _ Just...  _ wow _ . Something in him is awakened and he wants to laugh. Loudly. Freely.  _ Childishly _ . "Who are you?" He asks. He knows who the boy is. He's the Starcrafter. But Patton wants to know  _ more _ . Patton wants to know _everything_.

And the boy smiles, wide, brilliant. "Logan."

"Patton." And Patton tears his gaze away from Logan and looks around,  _ looks around _ , and breathes, and meanders, and  _ wonders _ . 

"Would you like to work here?"

The question is unexpected, sudden, breaking all of the rules of society that Patton grew up with, random, but meaningful. Patton turns back, smiles, wide, brilliant, and he says, honestly:

"I'd love to."

**Author's Note:**

> Actually, Caellie and I've had this in our files for like, months. Since the 14 of Feb (yes I wrote this on Valentines Day), actually, 2020. We just forgot about it, a bit.  
> It's here now!  
> Also known as "Vaye reads a bunch of Percy Shelley and then spits it out in a 1:00 AM sleeploss writing session."  
> Essentially, I wrote this at 1 AM while my brain could barely string two coherent thoughts together. It was never really intended to be longer than this, although I briefly humored an actual plot so you can see hints of that, but I didn't really have a point to writing this. I watched the Pixar Short "Luna" and what turned from a "Harry hires Draco for his magical coffee shop and they meet all the other characters while just having light hearted ambient 'Chihiro on the train' vibes" turned into this!  
> As for the Shelley bit, well...  
> For one of my classes I had to read Percy Shelley's "A Defense of Poetry" and "A Hymn to Intellectual Beauty." And, as I was writing this (at 1 AM, while very sleep deprived), I thought, "Wow, I'm being so original! These ideas of chaos and order are entirely my own!" And then I looked back on it and realized I had just regurgitated what I'd read, so. Take what you will of that, I'm not to blame for the actions of my past nor the consequences of the future, I just want to have fun with words.  
> And then I promptly stayed up, got drunk on sleeploss (1 AM may be nothing to you but I'm a lightweight okay?), and emailed this to Caellie in the middle of the night and could barely remember what I'd written the next morning.  
> Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this quick little Thing, and I hope you have a wonderful day!  
> \--Vaye


End file.
